Off Screen NPCs Purely Detrimental?
- Thread starter Sol.Dragonheart
- Start date
roguerouge
First Post
Actually, the other way to incorporate NPCs without endangering them is to make them an encounter or an obstacle. In one campaign, the paladin's commoner mom was a woman intent on marrying off her paladin daughter and putting an end to such foolishness. Another campaign involved shepherding 30 or so elves through enemy territory. So they helped with scouting and foraging.
In my current 1 PC (Bard) campaign, there's been tons of "encounters" using friendly npcs. One encounter was trying to help her lunkhead brother get in good with his girlfriends relatives. That included helping him lose a game of rugby in the mud without seeming to, putting up with a bore with a bad joke (the Aristocrats), and giving a toast. Her man in every port have been dates with diplomacy checks at the end of them. Her goblin crew is completely untrustworthy, so a lot of ship encounters involve pushing them to do the right thing with intimidate and diplomacy checks. One of them even didn't attack the kindly man approaching him with a sharp object, his medal of valor. Another NPC has been "poor knocked-up Dayl" for whom she spend half a year selling goods in various ports to help out.
Background NPCs are fodder for character-building too, not just plot.
In my current 1 PC (Bard) campaign, there's been tons of "encounters" using friendly npcs. One encounter was trying to help her lunkhead brother get in good with his girlfriends relatives. That included helping him lose a game of rugby in the mud without seeming to, putting up with a bore with a bad joke (the Aristocrats), and giving a toast. Her man in every port have been dates with diplomacy checks at the end of them. Her goblin crew is completely untrustworthy, so a lot of ship encounters involve pushing them to do the right thing with intimidate and diplomacy checks. One of them even didn't attack the kindly man approaching him with a sharp object, his medal of valor. Another NPC has been "poor knocked-up Dayl" for whom she spend half a year selling goods in various ports to help out.
Background NPCs are fodder for character-building too, not just plot.
LostSoul
Adventurer
No thanks. Emile Bronte d20 is too videogamey.LostSoul said:
Mallus said:
If the plot hook is "Your wife has just been kidnapped", yes. The exception might be a 4-color superheroes game, or Narrativist game, where there was no chance of the wife dying or being seriously hurt without the player's agreement.
Edit: If the hook is "Your friend the Margrave wants to make you Baron of Castle Gaunt, but you have to eliminate the current inhabitants first" then no, obviously the hook is not a punishment.
Peni Griffin
First Post
I have never played in a game where NPCs were only liabilities. I have played under DMs who overused the "threatening loved ones" shtick occasionally, and the solution was to tell him we didn't like it - pull him aside and tell him "NO devil babies!" When you can no longer motivate adventures without this kind of hook, the campaign's ready to be laid to rest.
Some people don't do backgrounds because they don't like to do backgrounds; far too many in my opinion. Certainly no one in my group has ever been burned by providing one, and they have frequently benefited.
My players spin off NPCs all the time, and they can be plot hooks without being liabilities. The rogue's mother is in danger and the party that came into town for her wedding is involved because she's in a city threatened by invasion, not because the BBEG has targeted her. The priest's hard-drinking, one-eyed, peg-legged, dog-breeding Aunt Wulfina gave him money to buy stuff she could resell at a profit, which he has since temporarily embezzled to finance war material. The fighter's boyfriend understands the city's internal politics and acts as a plausible vehicle for infodumps. And so on.
All generalizations are false. If you've had the same problem with every DM you've ever played, perhaps you need to change something with the way you interact with DMs? Or the way you choose them? Or something? Think outside the box!
Some people don't do backgrounds because they don't like to do backgrounds; far too many in my opinion. Certainly no one in my group has ever been burned by providing one, and they have frequently benefited.
My players spin off NPCs all the time, and they can be plot hooks without being liabilities. The rogue's mother is in danger and the party that came into town for her wedding is involved because she's in a city threatened by invasion, not because the BBEG has targeted her. The priest's hard-drinking, one-eyed, peg-legged, dog-breeding Aunt Wulfina gave him money to buy stuff she could resell at a profit, which he has since temporarily embezzled to finance war material. The fighter's boyfriend understands the city's internal politics and acts as a plausible vehicle for infodumps. And so on.
All generalizations are false. If you've had the same problem with every DM you've ever played, perhaps you need to change something with the way you interact with DMs? Or the way you choose them? Or something? Think outside the box!
Graybeard
Explorer
My players all have backgrounds. So far, only a couple of them have had family members show up in the game. The family of my female player's PC owns a bakery in the main city. The group has visited them a few times. I have had the PC's mom try to marry her off so she will stop this adventuring nonsense. Another PC had his family visited by the BBEG. Nothing bad happened, the BBEG went to visit, claiming he was a friend of the PC, and left a gift for the PC. It was lots of fun watching the PC trying to open the box without touching it, thinking it was trapped. In this case, it was not trapped but contained a couple of scrolls for the PC.
I have yet to need to put the PC's families in danger. It may happen in the future if they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As for other NPC's, some are one shots, some show up from time to time to offer information to the PCs or, in the case of merchants, items or adventure hooks. Right now, I have a shipping company in my campaign that the PCs have met the owner. The shipping company is having trouble with some of its ships getting attacked. Some of the PCs want to investigate as a favor, and the others because of the potential reward.
I have yet to need to put the PC's families in danger. It may happen in the future if they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As for other NPC's, some are one shots, some show up from time to time to offer information to the PCs or, in the case of merchants, items or adventure hooks. Right now, I have a shipping company in my campaign that the PCs have met the owner. The shipping company is having trouble with some of its ships getting attacked. Some of the PCs want to investigate as a favor, and the others because of the potential reward.
Sol.Dragonheart
First Post
I'm not saying NPCs close to the party should not become involved in the PCs adventures or even become targets of their adversaries, I am saying that should not be their only function. They should be of tangible and real benefit to the PCs in most cases, not a detriment.
The other issue I have with handling NPCs is when you are close to a given NPC as a PC, and take steps to safeguard them/prevent anyone from harming them, and it still comes to naught simply due to DM fiat. If I know a capable man in the guard, or am friends with the High Priest of the community, I should be able to ask them to watch over my object of affection and expect that they will be able to do so.
How about when the BBEG or otherwise attempts to do harm to a given NPC, the NPC through their own skill, the friends you've tasked with aiding them, or otherwise, makes it out alright, and doesn't cause problems for the PCs.
The other issue I have with handling NPCs is when you are close to a given NPC as a PC, and take steps to safeguard them/prevent anyone from harming them, and it still comes to naught simply due to DM fiat. If I know a capable man in the guard, or am friends with the High Priest of the community, I should be able to ask them to watch over my object of affection and expect that they will be able to do so.
How about when the BBEG or otherwise attempts to do harm to a given NPC, the NPC through their own skill, the friends you've tasked with aiding them, or otherwise, makes it out alright, and doesn't cause problems for the PCs.
DariusOfCT
First Post
I've had plenty of NPCs that have been of benefit to the party over the years. In my current campaign, a couple of the players are dedicated followers of the god of Freedom and a casual NPC that they had met several sessions back will soon re-introduce himself as a member of a group that is dedicated to stopping slavery & the followers of the goddess of tyranny & slavery. They thought him a simple caravan guard when they rescued him, but he could play a key part for them in a positive way - he did not reveal himself at first because one PC became a recent convert to the god of freedom and these PCs were also strangers to him - so, he was not sure he could trust them.
And, one player wrote up a brief background where he was the 4th or 5th son of a minor noble on the other side of the kingdom and he went out to adventure in order to prove himself to his father... the party will eventually make it back to his hometown, where there will be some internal family conflicts - some dislike this PC because he left his family and went out and associated with foreigners, elves and the like. However, he will be able to help his family and his father out and hopefully set things right...and will get some rewards because of that.
That said, there are always NPCs that can have bad things happen to them - the PCs went into a town as outsiders and hired a young man looking for work to ask questions around the docks for them. I rolled poorly "off screen" for him, and he basically wound up dead & in the gutter for asking the wrong people the wrong questions. But, it helped to advance the plot because then the players knew that the people they were dealing with were pretty serious bad guys if they'd slash an almost innocent guy's throat.
And, one player wrote up a brief background where he was the 4th or 5th son of a minor noble on the other side of the kingdom and he went out to adventure in order to prove himself to his father... the party will eventually make it back to his hometown, where there will be some internal family conflicts - some dislike this PC because he left his family and went out and associated with foreigners, elves and the like. However, he will be able to help his family and his father out and hopefully set things right...and will get some rewards because of that.
That said, there are always NPCs that can have bad things happen to them - the PCs went into a town as outsiders and hired a young man looking for work to ask questions around the docks for them. I rolled poorly "off screen" for him, and he basically wound up dead & in the gutter for asking the wrong people the wrong questions. But, it helped to advance the plot because then the players knew that the people they were dealing with were pretty serious bad guys if they'd slash an almost innocent guy's throat.
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